Editorial

The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:

35 Million Americans on Food Stamps: 12 Percent of U.S. Population on Food Stamps Highest Since Records Kept in 1969, and that’s before the Obama administration announced a planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending. (My Budget 360)

18 Million empty houses in the United States and 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that’s before Federal Reserve finishes rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as US Housing, the Automobile Industry and the American Dream are dismantled. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger)

Netanyahu’s late decision to add the Islamic Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil (Hebron) and Bilal Mosque in Bethlehem to the so-called “Israeli list of national heritage sites” seems to be re-igniting the spark of religious war between Jewish-Israelis on one side and the Moslem-Palestinians and the Islamic World on the other side.

Polls have closed in Iraq as I start to write this column early Sunday morning, Pacific Time in the US. As many as 10 million Iraqis are estimated to have cast their vote, showing their indomitable character – threats and all, adding to the vote of yet another 600,000 expatriates and refugees abroad, as well as the nation’s military, which had already done so this past week amid turmoil orchestrated by Iraq’s branch of Al Qaeda.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced plans today to stop the issue of arrest warrants for foreign officials such as Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and other Israeli war criminals who were forced to cancel planned trips to London after arrest warrants were issued against them. Under Brown’s proposals, the Crown Prosecution Service will take over responsibility for prosecuting war crimes and other violations of international law. Currently magistrates have to consider the case for an arrest warrant to be issued.

The Two States Solution (Israeli and Palestinian states) to the Zionist/Arab conflict has been, lately, revived as the only practical solution to the conflict. This solution, with all its embedded dangers, had been unjustly and illegally imposed by the UN in 1948 giving the Zionists a starting foot hold in the Arab World. It was, then, welcomed by the Zionists but rejected by the Arabs. Ironically, after 61 years and due to the changing balance of power, reviving this solution, now-a-days, is welcomed and sought for by the Arabs, but is rejected by the Zionist Israel.